Sufficiently Advanced Magic by Andrew Rowe : Review

Five years ago, Corin Cadence’s brother entered the Serpent Spire — a colossal tower with ever-shifting rooms, traps, and monsters. Those who survive the spire’s trials return home with an attunement: a mark granting the bearer magical powers. According to legend, those few who reach the top of the tower will be granted a boon by the spire’s goddess.

He never returned.

Now, it’s Corin’s turn. He’s headed to the top floor, on a mission to meet the goddess.

If he can survive the trials, Corin will earn an attunement, but that won’t be sufficient to survive the dangers on the upper levels. For that, he’s going to need training, allies, and a lot of ingenuity.

The journey won’t be easy, but Corin won’t stop until he gets his brother back.

I was a little bit hesitant to get this book as I’m not really a fan of LitRPG’s and this book sounded like it borrowed quite a bit from the genre, but since I was hearing about it from so many different people I figured that I would have to at least give it a chance. It’s only been a few hours since I finished the audiobook and I’m already kicking myself for not reading it sooner while at the same time trying to figure out exactly what the hell I just listened to. Sufficiently Advanced Magic by Andrew Rowe is one of the weirdest and most ridiculous books I’ve read and I absolutely loved it.

I was barely 20 minutes into the audiobook before I knew that I was hooked and I started texting a friend to tell them all about the weird shit that was already going on and exactly what I thought of it. I’m honestly not sure exactly sure where I was going to start with this review because there is so much going on in this book that it’s surprisingly hard to decide what to talk about. It really feels like Andrew Rowe took all the best parts of the dungeon crawler style of video games and combined it all with the rules from every RPG campaign setting there is and somehow turned it into an amazing book. I’m honestly a little surprised by how well everything worked so well together because looking back at it all it really shouldn’t have.

Normally this is where I’d talk about what characters I liked or what parts of the plot I thought really stood out but it’s just too difficult to do this time around. As ridiculous as I thought the story and characters were I enjoyed them all. My only real complaint would be that the attunement and magic system seemed a bit inconsistent at times and wasn’t very well explained most of the time and how the parts that were explained were done so in excruciating detail multiple times in the book.

Happily, the one or two things I disliked about the book really didn’t take away from the story all that much and I fully expect things to be cleared up and explained more as the series progresses. I will definitely be recommending this book to everyone I know and I’m already trying to figure out what I’m going to do for the next year while I wait for the sequel.

About the author

Shane believes firmly that it is impossible to own too many books which is probably why every surface of his house is covered in books, magazines, and graphic novels. He reads just about anything but he is most passionate about science fiction and fantasy and has been known to obsess over a book or series for years at a time.